


Round Two

by MajorStriderHolyBlood



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, I just fly the drone, i dunno man
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-15 05:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11799867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorStriderHolyBlood/pseuds/MajorStriderHolyBlood
Summary: Your name is Beck Strider. You got a sister, a mom, a dad, some good-ass friends and a promising future.Some tentacled nightmares make a deal with a certain green man, and shit proceeds to hit the fan.





	1. Your Name Is Beck

Your name is Beck Strider.

Let's start there.

You're seventeen years old, born and raised on Alternearth, the planet your parents and their friends made when they beat the game.

You're not getting into the game now. It happened, everyone knows it happened. No need to go over that again.

You have a sister, one year your junior. Her name's Gwen. Gwendolyn, actually, but Dad groans every time Mom has to utter it and remind him that yes, he agreed that that was a good name for his child.

You all know he thinks it's a fantastic name, but the man has an image to uphold, however ironic it must be.

Your Mom and Dad are Jade Harley and David Strider, the Witch of Space and the Knight of Time. You have a title too, all of you and your friends do, but that's not terribly relevant now. 

Your parents are thirty-seven, but they don't look a day over twenty. Side effects of being gods, you guess. That word has lost a lot of its meaning for your little group. 'God' really doesn't carry the same weight when that word is used to denote the person who still pulls pranks one would find at home in grade school.

On the subject of your uncle's pranks, you have hobbies too. You love to explore, always have, and you inherited your Mother's love for guns along with her specibus- Gwen took the swords your Dad was so proud of.

Now, all this is fine and dandy, but why do you need to repeat it all to yourself?

Right, right. You've just watched your hometown get razed to the ground by your close friend and mentor, and aren't sure if your parents are going to stagger out of the flames.

Glad we've gone and rebuilt your mental state. Let's cut back to the present.

* * *

All you can see is red. That's not entierly true, you see yellow and orange too. The three bright colors wrap around the city of your childhood, enveloping the houses and streets in blankets of ethereal fire. Tounges of magma seep from cracks in the ground, snaking towards the people who try in vain to escape the hellhole.

You can't take your eyes off the carnage. You want to, you wish you could with every fiber in your being, but you can't. It's horrible, you've never seen anything this awful, but at the same time, it's almost...

You don't want to think about it.

Gwen is sitting on the ground next to you. You only know she's still there because of her sobbing. It's loud, and comes in waves, much like the heat the smoldering city gives off.

She's clutching her sword- sheathed, you think and hope- much like how your knuckles are white from how tightly you've held your rifle. You saw some things down there that sure as hell required your weapons to get rid of, the two of you had killed quite a few horrors in your mad rush to safety.

Gwen suddenly stands up, and that tears your gaze away from the inferno. Coming up the hill are a few figures, you notice, and raise your gun accordingly.

The weapon is soon lowered. Approacing are faces you're more than glad to see: Dirk, Jane, and their children, Dallas and Jen. 

Gwen runs forward and just about tackles Dirk when she sees his face, and he returns her hug in earnest. He was even less visible with his emotions than your father, but you could see in his eyes- shadesless, you noted- that he was relieved to see the two of you. 

Jane frets over her as soon as she pries her off of Dirk, and he turns to face you. You swallow, suddenly overcome with emotion at how less bleak things seem, but he comes up and puts his hand on your shoulder, and you regain your composure.

Your uncle just has that effect on people.

His kids reach the top of the hill now, and Jen immediantly runs to Gwen. They freak out, as they tended to, and ran their mouths a mile a minute discussing the disaster.

Dallas made his way to you as Dirk and Jane talked amongst themselves. He was two years your senior, and was the brother you never had. A sword at his side and a stetson atop his head, he lived up to his heritage as a Texan in stride.

"I knew we weren't the only ones who got out." You began, smiling for the first time since you heard the first explosions.

He chuckled. "Come on now, we're tougher than that. You think English's little tantrum was enough to take us down?"

His reply made your stomach twist into knots. "So it really was Jake?"

His expression flipped back to somber. "Yeah, you must've passed the throne room too, huh?" You nodded. "It was him alright. Possesed by the green giant, mind you, but it was his body all the same."

The confirmation of what your eyes had barely processed while fleeing made your heart sink. Jake had been like family- well, really, everyone was like family, he was just a little closer- and to hear that he was responsible for this...

No, it wasn't him. It was that bastard English. 

Dallas noticed the expression on your face, placing a hand on your shoulder in a way that was not unlike his father. "Hey, don't sweat it. Jake didn't really do this, you know that. We'll find a way to beat the England out of him somehow."

His words were reassuring, but now your thoughts drifted to your parents again.

"Did you see anyone else when you were getting out?" You ask, "I mean, we couldn't have been the only ones who escaped."

He nods. "We saw John, Elen and Grant fleeing west," (All of you had gone east) "and your Dad was raising hell clearing a way to Jade. They should all be fine."

You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. "What about the Lalondes and the Trolls?"

"Didn't see any of them, but we saw some of Sollux's psiionic flares over in the park district." That would mean they had gotten out the south side.

Dirk turns away from Jane and towards the rest of you. "Hey, everyone-" he's stopped short by an ear-splitting blast of low noise that is accompanied by a red flare from the castle. As hands rush to cover ears, the noise seems to double back and reverse itself, and a red shockwave blasts a large chunk of the castle apart.

You see a figure in red flying out from the shockwave. Dirk's eyes are sharper than yours, though, and he recognizes the person and rockets into the air to intercept them.

Jane takes to the skies as well, and the body collides with Dirk soon after. He floats over to his wife, and the three are enveloped by a soft blue light as they float down to earth.

Dirk touches down, and sets down the body as he lands.

Your father opens his eyes a second later, a broken Caledfwlch in his hands, and you can see he's crying.

Dirk shakes him, tells him to get it together, and his triangular shades, cracked and nearly broken, slide from his face to the ground, where they snap in half.

Dave looks his brother in the eyes, red staring into orange, and chokes out two words:

"She's gone."


	2. Your Sword is White

Your sword is white, and stained with neon blood. Lime and scarlet tones whip through the air as your blade slices through the flesh of hastily-made horrors, carving though foe after foe as you march through the desecrated halls of your home.

Your name was Dave Strider, Knight of Time, God of Alternearth.

You were absolutely furious.

There were a lot of factors that contributes to your all-consuming rage right now. The first, and probably biggest factor, was the fact that your wife wasn't by your side or with your children- which is to say, safe. The other factors were things that ranged from 'shit-for-brains over here just stained my Hella Jeff bust with his freaky-ass lime blood' to 'shitfucking asstits why are there so many of these bastards and why do they smell like death itself'.

And so, you fought. You knew Jade was in the throne room, Rose had told you that much before she had gone offline. You battled your way through these hordes of faceless- mostly faceless, some bore visages that would haunt your dreams for many a night- demons, resolving to worry about where they had come from another day, and to focus on rescuing Jade right now.

One demon lunged from your blind spot, your fine-tuned reactions just a hair too slow to stop the jaws of the beast from chomping down on your arm-

Not your arm, his arm. An Alternate Dave intercepted the teeth, taking the blow and cleaving it in two before dissapearing in a flash of red. Being the Alpha had its perks, you supposed. Being at the top of the Dave Priority List was one of them.

If you thought about how many of you died keeping yourself alive, you started getting freaked out. Better to keep fighting.

As you had many a time over the years, you begrudgingly thanked your Bro for turning you into the fighter you had grown into, emotional scarring aside. It was his training- along with countless time spent with Dirk and the others, sparring and fighting- that kept you alive, that let you keep going.

And go you did.

You didn't realize just how many corpses you left in your wake, but Dirk- he had met with you just minutes ago, resolving to get out and find Beck and Gwen- would later tell you just how many dead you left in your path. 

Despite the claim that Striders were all shades and swords, resolve and focus were the deadliest weapons they wielded. Dirk's was a constant burn, devoting himself fully to any task in his way, and overpowering it in due time.

Dave's was like the tides, lax and laid-back for the most part, but when he decided to care, he cared with the passion of a thousand blazing stars.

Right now, Dave _cared_.

Jade was the light of your life, your other half, the sole thing that had kept you going for a few of your darker years. To lose her would be to lose an irreplaceable part of yourself. You could stand to lose your shades, they had been lost in the sea of monsters some time ago. You could stand to lose your sword, despite the bond you had grown to have with this welsh piece of shit. 

But losing friends? Family? 

No wonder you cared.

As your fist plowed through the boneless head of yet another fleshy creature, you caught a glimpse of a painting of the Genesis Frog that you knew lead to the throne room.

The realization of just how close you were to seeing Jade safe in your arms spurred you on, and several alternate selves- responding to the surge of emotion- blinked into existance to cut down the remaining atrocities.

But then, you stopped.

It was quiet. Far too quiet for someone to still be in the throne room.

_Tick._

What the hell was that?

_Tock._

Oh god. Was she okay?

_Tick._

You ran like hell to the throne room, an old saying of your Bro's coming back to you as you did:

_"Fight like hell, little man, but run harder than you fight."_

And you ran, and ran, and ran, the final few yards between you and the sight of your beloved seemed like miles.

 _Tock._

The beats of the clock were getting slower, you noted, what did that-

Your mind went blank as you rounded the corner.

Lord English stood above the near-dead corpse of Jade Harley, and the green clock behind her was still deciding on whether to call her death Heroic or Just.

You froze, but only for a moment, a precious moment that you regretted wasting. Something erupted inside of you, primal and furious, the emotion rising through you and culminating in a bloodcurdling scream that you didn't think you could have ever produced. 

You bolted for the clock, breaking a few laws and phasing through into other timelines to cover more ground in your own. Upon reaching English- hundreds of questions as to what he was doing here flooded your mind- you slid, Caledfwlch slicing through his green flesh and severing his foot, causing him to stumble and fall, if only for a second.

That was all the time you needed.

Picking yourself up, you flung the ivory blade at the clock, a desperate attempt to recreate a miracle you had performed only once before.

Caledfwlch's tip struck the middle of the clock with a resounding _clang_ , and you turned back to your Wife, just behind you.

The tip of Caledfwlch blasted through a newly-made portal of some space-time bullshit that you didn't give a shit about, striking Jade in the chest and breaking off from the rest of the blade as it sunk into her body.

You grabbed the sword and ripped it from the clock as it dissolved into a pile of green, candy-scented dust, the missing tip now matching the missing pommel that you had sacrificed years before for the same purpose:

A one-time way to cheat the so-called final death. 

There were other stipulations to it, but they didn't matter. The clocks were a cherubim construct, and Caledfwlch fucked that shit up.

That was all that mattered.

As Jade opened her eyes and gasped for breath, English roared and processed what had just happened. Reforming his foot in a haze of yellow light, he turned back to you and roared, in that glitchy, reality-shaking sort of way that chilled you to the bone.

This bastard had haunted your nightmares for years. You weren't ready to face him now.

-Is what you thought before you looked over to Jade. She was coughing on the floor, blood seeping from Caledfwlch's wound. Her eyes were wide, her breaths were shaky and fast, and you only saw one emotion plastered on her face:

Terror.

The kind that numbed and scarred the mind. To hell with whatever you thought or felt, you weren't letting him lay a hand on her.

You had failed her once, years before, as she had layed dead before you while you dueled with Jack and the White Wolf.

You could not fail her again.

Several Alt-Daves warped in, their Caledfwlch's as broken as yours was, and together you rushed the demon.

One of you was caught by the giant's fist, crunching and splattering across the stone around you. One tripped, and was blasted by one of English's lasers. 

The remaning six of you reached the demon, and you attacked furiously. One of you ripped his sword across the face of the monster, another hacking at his arms. You drove your broken blade into the heart of the creature, and your battle cry was cut short by a metallic screech as your sword rammed against something in the cherub's chest.

As yourselves backed away, and you pulled Caledfwlch out, you caught a glimpse of a white orb- a cue ball- before English roared again, reforming his wounds.

He held his hand before him, and a red gear formed in front of it.  
You immediantly felt nauseous, the same feeling when something in time isn't right and you have to fix it.

Instantly, the six of you formed your timetables, timelines stringing themselves in your vision as you furiously worked to stop the demon's work.

He was trying to break some of the timelines, to banish some of the Alt-Daves. One blinked out as you were to slow revitalizing a timeline, but there wasn't anything you could do now.

Realizing that English was fully occupied with his work, you screamed for Jade:

"Run! Go, get out! I've got him covered!"

She was able to stand now, and reached an arm out towards you, and despite the ringing in your ears from English's roars, you could make out her reply.

"I can't just leave you Dave!"

She was crying, and you just now realized that you were too. You shook your head, repeating your cry to flee as you stored you timetables in your sylladex.

Bringing out Caledfwlch one last time, you charged the still-immobile English, screaming out to Jade one more time.

You can't remember what you said, but she was running now.

English shifted one flashing eye towards you, roared, and Time _shattered._

As Caledfwlch broke his flesh, a massive red boom blasted thorough your being, you felt like you were being ripped apart and scattered through the cosmos.

The cue ball that served as the demon's heart was pulsing, you could tell, as he stalked towards Jade, once more laying on the ground, whimpering.

Your heart broke as he grabbed her, slinging her over his shoulder as his body twisted and broke, shrinking down to the form of a certain Jake English.

His eyes still flashed all colors of the rainbow, and they would be seared into your mind along with what he had to say:

"I'm taking the Witch, Knight. You'll never see her again, you know."

He pointed a finger gun at you, and pulled the trigger.

A shockwave ripped through you, breaking what felt like your whole body as you flew through the air, screaming with all the energy you had left. You saw Jake turn to an inky portal to step through before you bored through the heavy stone of the castle, causing even more damage to your mangled body.

Caledfwlch was all you carried as you fell for what felt like ages before something roughly grabbed you, and you felt the ground beneath your back.

You saw two blazing orange orbs above you, and you knew them to be the eyes of your brother.

You broke the news to him, and something inside you died.

You cried for a long, long time before passing out.


End file.
